Alberta Innovates wraps up sold-out Inventures

June 12, 2019

CALGARY - Alberta Innovates wraps up the second, sold out offering of its signature innovation event, Inventures. As a multi-conference, multi-stream, and multi-disciplinary gathering, Inventures themes, topics and speakers span the spectrum of digital and emerging technologies and industry sectors. Over 3,000 people attended the conference from 36 different countries heard from 235 speakers in over 100 sessions and 30 connect events.The three-day conference offered six concurrent tracks including:

  • building smarter cities
  • feeding a hungry planet
  • integrating the artificial mind
  • designing health systems for a global village
  • exploring blockchain breakthroughs, and
  • greening our blue planet

Announcements coinciding with Inventures included:

  • collaborative partnership between HKAI Lab (Hong Kong's Artificial Intelligence platform) and Amii (the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute) to expand the boundaries of artificial intelligence with cutting-edge technologies and expertise, and empower startups to develop and commercialize new inventions and technology
  • winners of the NOVAD fund competition, who will examine care gaps in diabetes and obesity; and
  • a renewed partnership between Alberta Innovates and the province of Zhejiang, China to enable technology companies in Alberta and Zhejiang to work together

An international startup pitch competition also took place during Inventures. Thirty companies pitched their best ideas and innovations to an expert panel hoping to take home one of the $10,000 prizes, free registration to Inventures 2020, and exposure to attendees and potential investors who are looking for the newest ideas and innovation. A team of judges made up of respected venture capitalists, selected the winners. The winners in this year's startup pitch competition are:

The Tenet I2C competition is a $100,000 business pitch competition to assist companies working in the area of medical discovery and innovation, transition towards commercialization. The awardees in the 2019 Tenet I2C competition are:

A separate student pitch competition also took place during the conference with these three finalists participating in a Student Entrepreneurs Showcase:

  • VADAR - Fort McMurray, Canada
  • EduEats - Edmonton, Canada
  • Hempact - Edmonton, Canada

Between Inventures and its associated connect events, over 450 sources of capital from Asia, the United States and across Canada were watching, evaluating, and assessing investment potential of some of the best companies Alberta has to offer.

Alberta Innovates is thrilled to have hosted such a successful event this year. Innovation comes about through active, meaningful, and intentional collision of ideas. Inventures provides the opportunity for those collisions to happen. We're already looking forward to Inventures 2020.

Laura Kilcrease, CEO, Alberta Innovates

Alberta Innovates invests in research, innovation and entrepreneurship to drive provincial economic growth and diversity. The organization provides technical expertise, entrepreneurial advice and support, opportunities for partnerships, and funding to advance the best ideas. Inventures was launched in 2018 to coalesce the national innovation community and to create the conditions for deal flow through networking, pitch events, and curated matchups between entrepreneurial ventures and investors from seed-stage to scale-stage venture capitalists. Visit Inventurescanada.com for full details.